THERESA May doesn’t think it’s fair for Scotland to have another independence referendum before the Brexit negotiations are over. It’s not fair for Scotland to take to the lifeboats before the UK ship of state has actually gone below the water. It’s fairer for Scotland to experience drowning in the icy waters of a cold hearted hard Brexit instead of jumping ship now that the iceberg has struck. It’s just more grievance mongering. The way that Nicola Sturgeon goes on you’d think that something really big had happened, like the UK taking Scotland out of the EU after we’d voted to remain and after Better Together promising us that a No vote was the only way to stay in.

Theresa May has a strange idea of fairness. She thinks it’s fair that only the losing side needs to respect the result of the 2014 referendum but the winners don’t need to respect the promises they made in order to win it. She thinks it’s fair to use EU citizens as hostages. She thinks it’s fair that the Fluffy one is the only MP in Scotland with an input into bills that affect Scotland. Well, I say input. That’s input in the same way that a stuffed teddy bear gets an input into which of the dollies are invited to a make believe tea party. Isn’t that right Mr Fluffy? Why yes! Yes it is! And the tragedy for Scotland is that that is considerably more input than any of our other MPs get.

It’s pretty clear that Theresa May struggles with the concept of fairness. This is after all a woman who thinks it’s fair that she can display her commitment to Christian values by giving up crisps for Lent while thousands whose benefits get unfairly sanctioned by her government get to give up food and heating. Personally I’d have preferred her to give up deporting grandmothers, but not being a Christian myself I’ll just have to take her word for it that what Jesus really wanted was for us to demonstrate our commitment to charity, compassion and love by refraining from packets of Walkers salt and vinegar for a month.

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Perhaps, just perhaps, if she hadn’t issued her crisps denying ordinance then the Walkers company wouldn’t have had to announce the closure of its crisps factory in Peterlee in County Durham the very next day. It does make you wonder just how many crisps Theresa gets through. Owners Pepsi-Co said that they were closing the plant in order to ensure the survival of their other business interests in the UK. The fact that Theresa’s hard Brexit has ensured the collapse of the pound may or may not be related to the crushing of the crisps. It’s not fair, but neither is Brexit.

Theresa May knows as much about fairness as Donald Trump knows about self-effacing modesty and empathy. She knows as much about fairness as she does about how to deliver a witty one liner during PMQs. If you think saying “innnn-crrehd-dibble” in a deep and strained voice to Jeremyn Corbyn is the epitome of wit, then you probably also think that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is going to be the saviour of the United Kingdom. And quite a few Unionists do actually think that, which only goes to show just how buggered the Union really is.

Theresa thought it was fair to lecture Scotland on fairness during the week of the anniversary of the 1979 devolution referendum. That was the referendum in which slightly less than 52% of those who voted expressed a vote in favour of Scottish devolution, but the result was deemed insufficient by Westminster and the will of Scotland was ignored. Theresa thinks it’s fair that when slightly less than 52% of those who voted in the EU referendum voted in favour of Brexit that this gives her a convincing mandate to do exactly as she pleases. It seems that some mandates are better than others in Britain, but that’s fair because the Westminster parliament is sovereign and they get to decide what’s fair. And what’s fair is always what suits Westminster.

It was established that it was unfair for Scotland to have a second independence referendum before Brexit was finished because the Prime Minister had a special cabinet meeting all about it, and everyone present agreed with her that it would indeed be terribly unfair. She knows that’s true because she went around the room and asked them all in the special voice she uses to speak to Jeremy Corbyn. Fluffy was there, and so were Big Ted, Little Ted, Hamble and Jemima. Humpty couldn’t make it because he was in a crisis meeting at the Foreign Office after he wrote another rude and racist poem about the Turkish Prime Minister.

Scotland could get more powers, Theresa insisted in an interview with a genuflecting BBC reporter who was refraining from stuffing her face with BBQ flavour Monster Munch for the duration, as a sign of respect. It was the day before Theresa came north to spread her crisp-denying message of vinegar flavoured Brexit to the benighted Scots and she was feeling buoyant since she wasn’t weighed down with a Peterlee factory’s worth of cheese and onion flavour.

She’s not going to say what those powers are. She’s not going to say when Scotland will get them. She refused to commit to any powers that are currently exercised by Brussels coming back to Holyrood, such as powers over agriculture and potato based snacks. Then she spent the rest of the interview doing what she has an undoubted talent for, that’s never ever knowingly giving a straight answer to a straight question when evasive sophistry will do instead.

But she’s determined that whatever new powers Scotland gets they will involve abstention from bags of Cheesy Wotsits. Unless you’re a Scottish secretary of state who’s looking for a snack in his beard, because that’s only fair. It’s as close to a vow as we’re likely to get, at least until the opinion polls start showing a growing majority for independence. And the way Theresa is going, that’s going to be happening sooner rather than later.

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